I think it would help our precision if an enemy were actually identified. Depending on who is speaking, our enemy has been identified as variously Saddam loyalists, Iraqi terrorists, or foreign terrorists somehow being imported from Iran and Syria. The only clear statement the administration has offered is that they are “bad men” who “do not want to see a prosperous Iraq.” I still contend that we’re ultimately fighting 2/3 of the Iraqi populace, and that the latter should be changed to “do not want to see the US prosper in Iraq.”

Our strategy for dealing with the problem appears to take a page straight out of Vietnam – rely on local informants to provide intelligence about equipment caches, personnel concentrations, etc., follow every lead, and when a promising target is chosen, unleash every piece of ordinance you can think of into it. Our weaponry has improved, but our thinking seems to be sloshing in the mud.

With the return of Reagan’s old guard, we’ve seen a return to what many consider outmoded maneuver and attrition warfare. It has its place, but we’re not fighting the German army in the hedgerows of France any longer. This is something entirely different. We won the part of the war in which this doctrine was designed to prosper. Now we’re on police duty, controlling a hostile occupied territory. If we can’t manage to win over the populace (unlikely since the numbers of civilian deaths continue to mount and the action we’re taking can only serve to alienate more), we will continue win every engagement through our superior firepower and yet ultimately lose the war.